Alisa Brownlee, ATP, CAPS blog offers recent articles and web information on ALS, assistive technology--augmentative alternative communication (AAC), computer access, and other electronic devices that can impact and improve the quality of life for people with ALS.
Email--abrownlee@alsa-national.org.
Any views or opinions presented on this blog are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the ALS Association.

Follow by Email

Friday, August 24, 2012

Before long, your doctor may be telling you to download two apps
and call herin the morning.

Smartphone apps already fill the roles of
television remotes, bikespeedometers and flashlights. Soon they may also act
as medical devices,helping patients monitor their heart rate or manage their
diabetes, and bepaid for by insurance.

The idea of medically
prescribed apps excites some people in the health careindustry, who see them
as a starting point for even more sophisticatedapplications that might
otherwise never be built.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

August 21, 2012 in Neuroscience Scientists have unraveled how our brain cells encode the pronunciation of individual vowels in speech. The discovery could lead to new technology that verbalizes the unspoken words of people paralyzed by injury or disease.

Diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease at 21, British physicist Stephen Hawking, now 70, relies on a computerized device to speak. Engineers are investigating the use of brainwaves to create a new form of communication for Hawking and other people suffering from paralysis. -

Daily Mail Scientists at UCLA and the Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology, have unraveled how our brain cells encode the pronunciation of individual vowels in speech. Published in the Aug. 21 edition of Nature Communications, the discovery could lead to new technology that verbalizes the unspoken words of people paralyzed by injury or disease. "We know that brain cells fire in a predictable way before we move our bodies," explained Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "We hypothesized that neurons would also react differently when we pronounce specific sounds. If so, we may one day be able to decode these unique patterns of activity in the brain and translate them into speech."

Fried and Technion's Ariel Tankus, formerly a postdoctoral researcher in Fried's lab, followed 11 UCLA epilepsy patients who had electrodes implanted in their brains to pinpoint the origin of their seizures. The researchers recorded neuron activity as the patients uttered one of five vowels or syllables containing the vowels.

With Technion's Shy Shoham, the team studied how the neurons encoded vowel articulation at both the single-cell and collective level. The scientists found two areas—the superior temporal gyrus and a region in the medial frontal lobe—that housed neurons related to speech and attuned to vowels. The encoding in these sites, however, unfolded very differently.

Neurons in the superior temporal gyrus responded to all vowels, although at different rates of firing. In contrast, neurons that fired exclusively for only one or two vowels were located in the medial frontal region. "Single neuron activity in the medial frontal lobe corresponded to the encoding of specific vowels," said Fried. "The neuron would fire only when a particular vowel was spoken, but not other vowels."

At the collective level, neurons' encoding of vowels in the superior temporal gyrus reflected the anatomy that made speech possible–specifically, the tongue's position inside the mouth. "Once we understand the neuronal code underlying speech, we can work backwards from brain-cell activity to decipher speech," said Fried. "This suggests an exciting possibility for people who are physically unable to speak. In the future, we may be able to construct neuro-prosthetic devices or brain-machine interfaces that decode a person's neuronal firing patterns and enable the person to communicate."

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Researchers are developing new ways to help the paralyzed
communicate withtheir thoughts alone. Many of the new techniques rely on
computers thatanalyze patients' brain activity and translate it into letters
or othersymbols. In a study published online in June in Current Biology,
BettinaSorger of Maastricht University in the Netherlands and her colleagues
taughtsix healthy adults to answer questions by selecting letters on a
computerscreen with their thoughts.